Can Google Be My Co-Author? A Conversation about Original Ideas with Sibelan Forrester

Sibelan Forrester isn’t threatened by AI, she is curious about it. As a professor of Russian Literature at Swarthmore College and a literary translator, she has seen how technology has made its way into creative work. But instead of shying away from tech, she gave her students a strange assignment: "Tell ChatGPT to write a paper about something you really care about. Then, see if you are happy with the output."

Professor Forrester wants her students to keep an open mind to the suggestions that new tools can provide because she sees them as helpful thought partners. And, she is skeptical that our writing and speech were ever really our own to begin with.

Come listen as Professor Forrester speaks with Merging Minds Host Gabriel Fairman about translation, authorship, and the originality of ideas in this latest episode.

They also discuss:

• Permeable Discourse
• Does synthetic discourse interfere with natural discourse?
• The influence of suggestions on the creative thought process
• The power of loneliness in writing
• How Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy had help with their masterpieces
• How discourse has no true point of origin
• How to judge intellectual quality, not just work quantity
• How Facebook isn’t too bad a translating Russian poetry
• How to incentivize agency, not laziness
• The dangers of human editors
• The importance of cultural and literary analysis in business translations
• The issue with the current economic model in translation

And more!

Click play to join our Merging Minds host Gabriel Fairman and his guest, Sibelan Forrester, for a conversation about language, creativity, and technology!

You can learn more about Sibelan Forrester here.

‍

P.S. Don't forget to leave a review and subscribe to Merging Minds Podcast powered by Bureau Works for more thought-provoking podcast episodes.

Listen here:

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

YouTube

And wherever else podcasts are found!